The lacquer on a steel pen protects it until it has been used for a while. After that, it will rust, if it is not wiped, and it will wear out whether it is wiped or not. All that the gold pen asks is not to be bent or broken, and it will last almost forever. It has the flexibility of the quill, but does not have to be "mended." Gold pens are made in much the same way as are steel pens; but just at the point a tiny shelf
is squeezed. Upon this shelf a bit of the alloy of two exceedingly hard metals, iridium and osmium, is secured by melting the gold around it; and it is this bit which stands all the wear of rubbing on the paper. When gold pens were first made, tiny bits of diamonds or rubies were soldered on for points; but they were expensive, and they had a disagreeable fashion of falling off.
A century ago, writers would have thought it the height of luxury to have a gold pen; but now they are not satisfied unless they can be saved the trouble of dipping it into an inkstand, and they look upon the fountain pen as their special friend. The fountain pen carries its supplies with it. The pen itself is like any other gold pen, but the barrel is full of ink. A little tube carries the ink to the point, and the slight bending back of the pen as one writes lets it run out upon the paper. At the end of the slit, at the back of the pen, is a hole to let air into the barrel as the ink runs out. A perfect fountain pen ought to be prepared to write—without shaking—whenever the cap is taken off, and not to refuse to work so long as a drop of ink remains in the barrel. It should never drop ink at the point and, whether the point is up or down, it should never leak there or anywhere else.
The stylographic pen is quite a different article. There is no pen to it; the writing is done with the end of a needle which projects through a hole at the point. The barrel and point are full of ink; but even if the pen is held point down, it will not leak because the
needle fills up the hole. When you press the point on paper to write, the needle falls back just enough to let out what ink is needed. The flow stops the instant the pen ceases to touch the paper. The special advantage of the stylographic is that the mere weight of the pen is sufficient pressure, and therefore many hours of writing do not tire the muscles of the hand. The advantage of the fountain pen is that it has the familiar action of the gold pen, and that it will adapt itself to any style of handwriting.
A pen of almost any kind is a valuable article, but for rough-and-ready use we should find it hard to get on without its humble friend, the lead pencil. A lead pencil, by the way, has not a particle of lead in it. The "lead" is all graphite, or plumbago. Years ago sticks of lead were used for marking, and made a pale-gray line. When graphite was introduced, its mark was so black that people called it black lead, and the name has stuck. No one who has ever tried to use a pencil of real lead could fail to appreciate graphite, and when a graphite mine was discovered in England, it was guarded by armed men as watchfully as if it had been a mine of diamonds. That mine was exhausted long ago, but many others have been found. The best graphite in the world comes from Ceylon and Mexico.
When graphite was first used for pencils, it was cut into slabs and these slabs into small strips. The broken and powdered graphite was not used until it was discovered that it could be mixed with clay and so
made into sticks. In a lead pencil there are only three substances, graphite, clay, and wood, but a really good one must be manufactured with as much care as if it were made up of twenty. First of all, the graphite is ground and ground and ground, until, if you take a pinch of it between your thumb and finger, you can hardly feel that anything is there. It is now sifted through fine silk and mixed with water and finely powdered clay, and becomes a wet, inky mass. This clay comes from Austria and Bohemia and is particularly smooth and fine. The amount put in is carefully weighed. If you have a hard pencil, it was made by using considerable clay; if your pencil is soft, by using very little; and if it is very soft and black, it is possible that a little lampblack was added.
This inky mass is ground together between millstones for several weeks. Then it goes between rollers, and at length is squeezed through a die and comes out in soft, doughy black strings. These are the "leads" of the pencils. They have been thoroughly wet, and now they must be made thoroughly dry. They are laid on boards, then taken off, cut into pieces the length of a pencil, and put into ovens and baked for hours in a heat twenty times as great as that of a hot summer day. They certainly ought to be well dried and ready for the wood. The red cedar of Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama is the best wood for pencils because it is soft and has a fine, straight grain. It is cut into slabs about as long as one pencil, as wide as six, and a little thicker